What is this engine??

Also found in Mc Cloud, CA this engine? Maybe marine but way long ways from water.

Looks almost like a generator engine or something.

I was wondering if is was used as an oiler for saw mill machinery. Note the oiler pump and lots of oil oilers.

These engines were very common in marine use powering pumps, and generators. It looks like it used to have a generator on it, but has been modified for some other use. By the looks of the gear on the shaft, it may have been used to power a conveyor of some sort. These engines usually had an oil pump in the crank case, but the oilers on the outside may have been added on later. They look like they are plumbed to replace the origional oiling system.

One thing common in most sawmills are sawdust and lumber conveyors. This could possibly have powered one. The oilers possibly oiled the shafting on several of the conveyors. This being an enclosed crank case it probably had an oil bath so the engine would not need any of the oilers. The engine cylinder was less than eight inches and the piston valve only four so it wasn't a large duty engine.

The large oil pump on the right is a Manzel. It was most likely the cylinder lubricator because it is conected to the valve gear.

I would say the outboard end of the engine
shaft has a sprocket on it, not a gear.

I've seen sawmills that use a peculiar, square
section steel chain that uses no rollers,
the links just clip onto each other. Looks
like they would just fit that sprocket.

Jim

I believe the engine pictured may be a C.H.Wheeler steam engine, mad ein Trenton or Philadephia. It is not a marine engne, but a "totally enclosed self-oiling engine". It was typically used for auxiliary mechanical drives. Aboard ship it woul dhave run something like a condensor circulating pump or centrifugal pump for ballast water. It does not have a cutoff governor so is unlikely to have been a generator engine.

Ashore, it may well have been ordered initially to drive a stoker on a boiler or for running an induced or forced draft fan. The sprocket may well have been used as part of a "travelling grate" type stoker drive.

My own guess of the size of the engine is probably around 6" bore x 6" stroke. These were high speed engines. C.H. Wheeler, along with Wachs, Troy, American Blower and a few others all built competing lines of this type of engine. C.H. Wheeler used a "bicycle" type sprocket (cut into two halves) bolted to one crank web to drive a gear pump for a recirculating lube oil system. The numerous sight glasses on the engine main frame were to check flows of oil to the crosshead, rod, valve motion and main bearings. The Manzel lubricator was strictly for the cylinder lubrication.

The bedplate under the engine may mean that engine was ordered as part of a Jet Condensor, something C.H.Wheeler built. However, the sprocket and shaft coupled on lead me to think the engine & bedplate were taken from a scrapped jet condensor and used to drive something else.

C.H. Wheeler built jet condensors with engines about like the one pictured into the 1920's. The engines drove a "mixed flow" type centrifugal pump which was integral with the jet condensor above it. The whole works came mounted as a unit on a cast iron bedplate like the one pictured. A jet condensor unit was a lot cheaper and more compact than a surface condensor. The jet condensors wer euse din recip engine plants or plants with smaller steam turbines. As steam pressures and sizes of turbine sincreased, jet condensors fell out of use. Engines like the one pictured were then put to other work.


Joe Michaels

Joe Michaels

Hello,
Steam engine for sure, but I'm not sure of any info on it.

Thanks
Richard

OK you photoshop gurus, how about zeroing in and lightening up the two plates that can be seen?

I have tried enlarging the plate on the base, but it is too dark for me to see anything. They can do this on the TV cop shows easily....

I went back to my original picture to try to enlarge the plate but it it too grainy. My camera is one of the very early (low cost) digitals and to get very many pictures I had to use less pixtel settings. Funny thing how electronic things change. I paid over three hundred for this camera an now I can get one many times better vor the same price or even less.